6Professionalism
10Information Literacy
Skill Spotlight: Information Literacy
Finding, evaluating, and responsibly using information to make good decisions.
10
Information Literacy
What this skill is
You're living in the most information-rich moment in human history, and one of the most information-polluted.
More content is produced every day than anyone could take in over a lifetime. AI tools produce confident, detailed, believable answers in seconds. Social media shows you whatever is most engaging, not most accurate. News, opinion, marketing, and misinformation often look identical at first glance.
Information Literacy is the skill that cuts through all of that. It means knowing how to ask the right questions, find credible sources, evaluate what you're reading, and use information responsibly to make real decisions, without doubting everything.
It's one of the most transferable skills you'll build in college. It applies to every class, every job, and every decision you make as a citizen, consumer, and professional.
Information is everywhere. The real question is whether it's trustworthy, and whether you can tell.
Where you're headed
Below, in plain terms, is the difference between where most students start and where you're headed.
Lesson 1.2 explains Benchmark, Milestone, and Capstone.
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Benchmark Where you're starting
- You can identify topics that call for information before you decide.
- You can use basic search strategies with familiar resources.
- You can name strengths and weaknesses of information sources.
- You can describe the main ideas from a variety of sources.
- You can identify where information came from.
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Milestone Your target
- You ask questions sized right for your field or situation.
- You use search strategies that find credible resources for your specific need.
- You analyze sources for bias, expertise, and point of view, not just surface credibility.
- You see connections between sources and use them to make well-informed decisions.
- You give appropriate credit to the sources you use.
The shift from Benchmark to Milestone is the shift from taking information in to actively questioning it, and using what you find with intention and integrity.
Where it shows up in this module
Module 4 is where Information Literacy becomes a hands-on skill instead of an idea.
- The SIFT method. Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims. SIFT turns Information Literacy into four moves you can make in real time, on any source, including AI.
- Evaluating AI output. AI answers are fluent and confident, and they can be partly or completely wrong. Checking claims, spotting gaps, and tracing sources is Information Literacy applied to the tool you'll use most.
- Choosing study resources. When you look for help with course material, like a video, a website, or an AI explanation, you're making an information decision. Is it credible? Is it accurate? Does it answer what you actually need?
- Digital organization. Managing your files, notes, and resources so you can find them when you need them counts too. Information you can't find might as well not exist.
In your own life
Take a moment with these before you move on.
- Think about the last time you looked something up to make a decision: a purchase, a health question, something for a class. How did you decide whether to trust what you found?
- Have you ever acted on information that turned out to be wrong or misleading? What happened, and what would you do differently now?
- When you get an answer from an AI tool, what do you do with it? Check it, use it as is, or something in between?
How it shows up later
Information Literacy is one of the skills you can choose for your fourth STAR(T) Story at the end of the course. As the semester goes on, notice moments when you had to find, evaluate, or responsibly use information to make a real decision, in class, at work, or in your personal life. Those are your stories.
The SIFT skills you build in this module make strong material. "I checked a source using SIFT and changed my decision because of what I found" is exactly the kind of specific, honest story the capstone is looking for.
Skill definition and Milestone indicators are based on the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education's Kentucky Graduate Profile (opens in a new tab).